What are Autoresponders?
By David Callan
Autoresponders are just that, they're programs set up to
automatically respond with an designated email when a blank
email is sent
to a certain email address.
Have you ever seen something like this
For a Free Guide to ? send a blank email to freeguide@akamarketing.com
That email address is the address of an Autoresponder and
when someone sends an email to an Autoresponder they receive
a pre-written email message back with information that is
setup for that particular address immediately within seconds.
In this case the information would be a free guide.
Basically Autoresponders are "email on demand" bots
which make your information available 24 hours a day, 365
days per year and believe me when I say they can dramatically
increase your sales without any work because they can.
Autoresponders are very important tools when you need to
automate your Internet marketing efforts. You can easily
process over 50,000+ requests daily without any effort on
your part!
They're used mainly for three things
Sales Letters
Customer Support
Email gathering
Autoresponders are great for sales letters. Suppose you
post to a couple of forums and newsgroups, within your posts
you can offer a free report about your industry and included
in that report you could have a sales letter. You then post
the email address of the appropriate Autoresponder and tell
people to send a blank email to it for the free report and
within seconds the user could be reading the report and your
sales letter. You don't have to do anything.
Number two is particularly relevant to very busy sites which
get a lot of support related questions, many of them similar.
Autoresponders allow you to set up predefined answers to
the most likely questions about your company or products
and services. Using Autoresponders like this can cut up to
70% of your customer service requirements.
Imagine if you run a hosting company and people wanted to
know how to set up a CGI script, you simply direct them to
an Autoresponder with lots of information and details as
to how to do this. This way real life people won't have to
do it, they could spend their time doing something more productive
like marketing and promoting their site.
The true beauty of Autoresponders however is that they capture
the email addresses of people who have requested information
from them allowing you the Internet marketer to follow up
with those prospects. You'll be able to retrieve these addresses
from your Autoresponder log.
Certain Autoresponders can even be set up to email these
people at designated times of the year, the power in this
feature of Autoresponders is the ability to resell your products
to past customers perhaps after their subscription has expired
or after their product has run low.
Autoresponders are truly amazing marketing tools which even
the smallest of companies can use. With them you can automate
your marketing campaigns and connect with your customers
and potential customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, this
in turn will help you sell more.
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